st chapter which
Mr. Cartaret that evening could have desired to read. He had always
considered that to some minds it might be open to misinterpretation as
a defense of laxity.

"'Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?'

"She said, 'No man, Lord.' And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I
condemn thee.'"

Mr. Cartaret lowered his voice and his eyes as he read, for he felt
Gwendolen's eyes upon him.

But he recovered himself on the final charge.

"'Go'"--now he came to think of it, that was what he had said to
Essy--"'and sin no more.'"

(After all, he was supported.)

Casting another and more decidedly uneasy glance at his family, he
knelt down. He felt better when they were all kneeling, for now he had
their backs toward him instead of their faces.

He then prayed. On behalf of himself and Essy and his family he prayed
to a God who (so he assumed his Godhead) was ever more ready to hear
than they to pray, a God whom he congratulated on His ability to
perform for them far more than they either desired or deserved; he
thanked him for having mercifully preserved them to the close of
another blessed day (as in the morning he would thank him for having
spared them to see the light of another blessed day); he besought him
to pardon anything which that day they had done amiss; to deliver them
from disobedience and self-will, from pride and waywardness (he had
inserted this clause ten years ago for Gwendolen's benefit) as well as
from the sins that did most easily beset them, for the temptations to
which they were especially prone. This clause covered all the things
he couldn't mention. It covered his wife, Robina's case; it covered
Essy's; he had dragged Alice's case as it were from under it; he had a
secret fear that one day it might cover Gwendolen's.

Gwendolen was the child who, he declared and believed, had always
given him most trouble. He recalled (perversely) a certain thing that
(at thirteen) she had said about this prayer.

"It oughtn't to be prayed," she had said. "You don't really think you
can fool God that way, Papa? If I had a servant who groveled to me
like that I'd tell him he must learn to keep his chin up or go."

She had said it before Robina who had laughed. And Mr. Cartaret's
answer to it had been to turn his back on both of them and leave the
room. At least he thought it was his answer. Gwendolen had thought
that in a flash of intellectual honesty he agreed with he